Wednesday, February 13, 2008

January 25th- the Zip Line

Something like over 70% of plant, animal and insect life in the rainforest is found in the canopy!

This is the happy shot of us on the 1st platform- Welcome to the heavens!

This is a weird shot of the platform from below

I got pulled up to the platform because I am lazy! As you can see in this picture I am well-rested because I got pulled up, Ben used ascenders and he is very tired!! :)

1/25/07

Okay, I will admit, I was a little bit afraid to do the zip line, but it was pretty awesome. You are up about 90 meters (about 250 feet) in the sky, zipping through the canopy layer. We started our zip line experience by hiking about 20 minutes through the varzea. Christian purposefully kept a very quick pace so that we weren’t getting sacked by the mosquitoes. When we got to the zipline we had a choice of using ascenders and climbing to the top ourselves or having the guides pull us up. I decided I was just fine with having myself hauled to the top by pulley, while Ben decided to climb. He actually did it pretty quickly. Once we were at the top, we could see ant lions and butterflies flying around, macaws and parrots flying overhead, and lots of ants and orchids and bromeliads living among the other life in the canopy layer. You basically are in a harness sliding from one platform to the next, we started our zip journey in the canopy of a Ceiba tree, a sacred tree of the Peruvian Amazonian peoples. (I'm not sure if the Ceiba we were at was the Pentendra or the Samauma, the Samauma is the sacred tree of the Peruvian Amazon.) Very cool!